On Saturday, September 26, 2015 at 9:06:42 PM UTC-4, Ashton Crusher wrote:
On Sat, 26 Sep 2015 12:00:06 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:

On Saturday, September 26, 2015 at 2:43:01 PM UTC-4, Ashton Crusher wrote:
On Fri, 25 Sep 2015 05:56:16 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:

On Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 9:50:42 PM UTC-4, Winston_Smith wrote:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2015 00:19:10 +0000, Ewald Böhm wrote:

My question is HOW did the car *know* it was being *tested* for emissions?

What I don't understand is that VW had to submit test results from a
(supposedly) independent company in Europe to get certified in Europe
for the 11 million cars that might be affected.

They apparently contracted that job out to Applus Idiada of Spain.

Has anyone any idea how Applus Idiada verified the wrong numbers?

One likely way would be that they also did it via a dyno test.
It's certainly easier and more practical, consistent, than driving
on roads.

Why would it be difficult to run these test on the road? Sure the
equipment might cost several thousand but that's chickenfeed for this
kind of study.

I didn't say it was difficult, just that it's easier to run a test
on the dyno. And it's a controlled repeatable environment. Driving
on the highway 500 miles today could be under different conditions
than tomorrow, that you have no control over, ie traffic backed up,
slower speeds, more accelerating, de-accelerating, etc.

Which is exactly the situation you WANT to find out about...

I think we're getting off track here. The post I replied to, I
believe it was about VW having sent the cars to some outside lab
to be tested and they passed. Someone questioned how that could
be. I simply said probably because that outside lab tested it
the same way, on the dyno. Since presumably VW didn't want to
"find out about it", it would seem highly likely that they made
sure they understood how that lab was going to do the test.



How does
the system, which seems to be working in the "lab" actually work in
the real world. Sure there's more variability, so what. The point of
emissions controls isn't to keep the soot off the walls of the "lab"
it's to keep the soot out of the atmosphere out in the real world.

I would have to disagree. The point of the emissions test is to
pass whatever the standards are, the test methods, as defined by
EPA. If the EPA says running it on the dyno it has to put out
no more than X, Y, Z, then that's what counts. They shouldn't
be cheating on the test, but designing it to meet the EPA reqts
and the EPA required testes is what counts.